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Brief review of the chemistry of

polyphosphoric acid (PPA) and bitumen

NRCC-47711

Masson, J-F.

A version of this document is published in / Une version de ce document se trouve dans:

Energy & Fuels, v. 22, no. 4, June 2008, pp. 2637-2640 doi: 10.1021/ef800120x

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 1

A brief review of the chemistry of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) and bitumen

J-F Masson
Institute for Research in Construction,
National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0R6
Phone: 613-993-2144. Fax: 613-952-8102. E-mail: jean-franois.masson@nrc.gc.ca

Abstract

Bitumen finds great use in paving and roofing applications. To enhance or extend its

performance, it is often modified with a polymer, including polyphosphoric acid (PPA).

PPA is a reactive oligomer, a short chain polymer, whose reaction with bitumen is poorly

understood. In an effort to better understand their reaction, the chemical characteristics

of PPA and bitumen are reviewed. It is concluded that PPA cannot dissociate and react

with bitumen unless enclaves of high dielectric constant exist in bitumen.

Introduction

Bitumen is used in over two hundred applications, most of which relate to civil

engineering, and to paving and roofing in particular (1). In an attempt to change its

characteristics and improve its performance, bitumen is often modified with an elastomer

(2, 3), a plastomer (4, 5, 6, 7), a thermoset (8, 9), sulphur (10, 11), or a mineral acid

(12). There is now much interest in the use of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) to modify

bitumen. By itself or in combination with a polymer, PPA provides a means of bitumen

modification usually produced more expensively with a polymer alone.

It is common for material formulators and developers to use bitumens of different sources

as dictated by market forces. As bitumen changes, it is often difficult to predict the effect

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of a modifier on bitumen and determine in advance the level of modifier required to

achieve a given characteristic. In many cases, the modifier is dispersed in bitumen at

high temperatures. In some cases, the modifier reacts with bitumen. This is the case of

PPA, but the nature of the reaction is ill understood. In an effort to shed light on this

reaction, and before PPA-modified bitumens are studied further, it is beneficial to better

know the raw materials. Consequently, we briefly review here the chemistry and the

composition of bitumen and PPA.

Bitumen

Bitumen is a residue of the distillation of crude oil. Most often this is a two-step process

where atmospheric and vacuum distillations are combined, in which case straight-run

bitumen is produced. When the distillation residue is oxidized in an effort to change its

consistency, blown bitumen is obtained (13).

The characteristics and composition of bitumen depend in large part on the source of the

mother crude oil, for instance, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela (14). The

chemical complexity of bitumen precludes any precise molecular identification.

Consequently, it is often conveniently characterized by its chromatographic fractions, the

maltenes and the asphaltenes (As), which are, respectively, soluble and insoluble in n-

heptane. The maltenes can be fractionated further into saturates (S), aromatics (A) and

resins (R) (15, 16). The SARAs terminology can be confusing, however, because the

aromatics fraction (A) most often contains little conjugated ring structures (14). Table 1

provides the composition of the fractions in more classical terms.

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[Table 1]

The molecular weight of the SARAs increase as S<A<R<As between 300 and 1000

Daltons (17, 18). Aromatic nuclei commonly have three to five condensed aromatic

rings (19). The bitumen molecules can thus be fairly large, with alkanes and pending

alkyl chains on aromatic nuclei providing for entanglements and viscoelastic properties.

In contrast to viscoelastic polymers, however, bitumen molecules do not have identical

repeat units. Bitumen can be regarded as an oligomer with about 10 repeat units, with

each repeat unit different from the next, and where the molecular weight of the repeat

unit varies from about 35 Da to 90 Da (20).

The SARAs fractions also increase in aromaticity and heteroatomic content in the order

S<A<R<As (14). In bitumen, sulfur, oxygen and nitrogen can respectively attain about

8.5%, 1.2% and 1.5% by mass (21). Typical bitumen functional groups are shown in

Figure 1.

[Figure 1]

The miscibility of the SARAs fractions and the dispersion of the various functional

groups in bitumen are of great interest because they govern its chemical and physical

characteristics. The miscibility of the fractions is addressed by the colloidal bitumen

model, which states that asphaltenes are stabilized by the resins in a matrix of mixed

saturates and aromatics (22). A more recent model addresses the dispersion of the

heteroatomic functions in bitumen. It characterizes bitumen as a homogeneous mixture of

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neutral and amphoteric molecules, where adjacent acidic and basic functions interact to

form a viscoelastic network within the neutral fraction (23).

Notwithstanding the success of the colloidal and the amphoteric models, both are based

on solvent fractionation of bitumen by chromatography, which provide an incomplete

view of bitumen in its solid state, by neglecting for instance the existence of ordered

material. The undisturbed solid-state structure of bitumen can be characterized by

modulated differential scanning calorimetry, MDSC (20, 24), and atomic force

microscopy, AFM (25, 26). These methods show that bitumen can contain at least six

phases and that it is heterogenous on a 15 m scale. MDSC shows that it can have four

glass transition temperatures from distinct amorphous phases, along with endothermic

transitions from crystalline paraffins, and from mesogenic (liquid-crystalline like)

asphaltenes whose ordering is time dependent (27, 28). Given this complexity, it is not

surprising that bitumens of identical classes can have different chemical compositions as

illustrated in Table 2 (21) for bitumens with a 58-28 grade (29). For this reason, it is

difficult to predict the stability or the reactivity of an additive in a mixture with bitumen.

[Table 2]

Polyphosphoric acid

Synthesis and composition

The basic compounds for the production of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) are phosphorus

pentoxide (P2O5) and phosphoric acid (H3PO4), as shown in Figure 2. Phosphorus is first

oxidized to phosphorus pentoxide, which crystallizes as P4O10. Upon its reaction with

water, phosphoric acid is produced. This route to H3PO4 is known as the dry process,

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which is used to provide high purity material (30, 31). A cheaper wet process provides

H3PO4 from the reaction of sulphuric acid on ground apatite phosphate rock,

Ca3(PO4)2CaF2 (30, 31).

[Figure 2]

PPA is an oligomer of H3PO4. High purity material is produced either from the

dehydration of H3PO4 at high temperatures or by heating P2O5 dispersed in H3PO4 (32).

Figure 3 illustrates the equilibria for these reactions, which produce different chains

lengths and distributions. The dehydration method tends to produce short chains,

whereas the dispersion method usually produces chains with more than 10 repeat units

(32).

[Figure 3]

PPA is available in various grades, the naming of which can be confusing as the

percentage can exceed 100% (Table 3). One hundred percent phosphoric acid contains

72.4% P2O5 as calculated from the formula weight ratio P2O5/H3PO4. Similarly,

pyrophosphoric acid (H4P2O7) contains 79.8% P2O5 as calculated from the ratio

P2O5/H4P2O7. The ratio of these P2O5 contents provides a relative phosphoric acid

content, which for pyrophosphoric acid is 79.8%/72.4% = 110%. Other examples are

provided in Table 3.

The production of PPA provides a distribution of chain lengths, where the number of

repeat units in the PPA chain, n in Figure 3, varies from one chain to the next. Jameson

(32) characterized this distribution and found that 100% phosphoric acid is a mixture of

H3PO4 (orthophosphoric acid) with about 10% dimer (pyrophosphoric acid) by weight.

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Figure 4 shows the distribution of chain lengths for three common commercial grades

used to modify bitumen. The 105% PA grade contains for the most part short monomeric

and dimeric segments, ortho and pyro phosphoric acids. In contrast, the 110% grade has

the same dimeric content, but little monomer, converted to segments with n > 3. In the

higher 114% grade, little monomer is left. They have all been converted to chains with 2

to 14 units. This increase in chain length leads to chain entanglements and explains the

increased viscosity of the higher grades (33).

[Table 3]

[Figure 4]

Dissociation and reactions with PPA

Koebner and Robinson (34) pioneered the use of PPA as a reagent in organic synthesis

when they produced a steroid skeleton after the cyclisation of a carboxylic acid. In the

seventy years since then, PPA has been found to be an effective reagent and solvent for

numerous synthetic applications, as detailed in several reviews (35, 36, 37), including

alkylation, acylation, cyclisation, halogenation, dehydration, hydrolysis, polymerization,

and phosphorylation, amongst several others. Figure 5 illustrates some examples of

possible interest to the bitumen scientist (38, 39, 40, 41).

[Figure 5]

All phosphoric acids are acidic without being oxidizing, in contrast to mineral acids like

nitric acid (31). In water, the dissociation of the phosphoric acid and the release of the

protons follow the equilibria shown in Figure 6. Orthophosphoric acid has only one

strongly ionizing proton, with a pK1 of 2.1. The second proton, with a pK of 7.2, is not

more acidic than those of water. As the phosphoric acid chain length increases, however,

the acidity increases. The dimeric pyrophosphoric acid has two acidic hydrogens and the

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 7

trimeric triphosphoric acid has three (31). This increased acidity must be related to the

ability of the longer chains to stabilize multiple negative charges by tautomerization and

delocalization as shown in Figure 7 for the dimer. The longer the PPA chain, the greater

its acidity as each repeat unit can release a proton and stabilize the charge by resonance.

On a weight basis, however, the acidity of PPA is equal to that of H3PO4, which also

releases one proton per phosphorus atom. Moreover, upon dissolution of PPA in water,

the equilibrium shown in Figure 3a is shifted to the left so that PPA reverts back to

H3PO4. On an equal weight basis, the acidity of PPA in water is thus independent of

chain length.

[Figure 6]

[Figure 7]

Despite tabulated dissociation constants and the known acidic nature of PPA, its

mechanism of action is ill understood. It is often thought to be a reaction catalyst (38),

possibly because the anion PPA, e.g. H2PO4, is amphoteric. Its dual acidic and basic

character is shown by the multiple equilibria in Figure 6. The action of PPA on alcohols

is a good example of its amphoteric activity, as the PPA- anion adds to alcohols to

provide a phosphorylated product (35, 38).

PPA is also blended and reacted with bitumen (42). With the many functional groups in

bitumen, however, the exact reaction between PPA and bitumen can only be inferred.

Giavarini et al. (43) alluded to a reaction of PPA with asphaltenes, and Orange et al.

showed that it can occur by phosphorylation (44). Baumgardner et al. (45) concluded

that many competing reactions were possible.

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It is noteworthy that PPA may be a very weak acid when mixed with bitumen. For PPA

to dissociate into PPA and H+, the medium must be of sufficiently high dielectric

constant (). Water is very polar. It has the highest dielectric constant of all solvents,

closely followed by H3PO4, as shown in Table 4 (46, 47). Consequently, a hydration

sphere can stabilize the charges of dissociated anions and cations (48). This stabilization

is gradually lost when water protons are replaced with non-polar alkyl groups (49). The

reduced potential for charge stabilization is shown, for example, by the reduced dielectric

constant for ethanol and ether in Table 4. Below a dielectric constant of 15, it is

generally considered that charge stabilisation is not possible (48). Consequently, in non-

polar bitumen ( = 3), PPA is unlikely to dissociate to its charged moieties, PPA and H+.

Any dissociation of PPA and reaction with bitumen would have to be localized to

bitumen enclaves with high dielectric constant, the existence of which is speculative, but

not incompatible with the grouping of several amphoteric groups (23), and nanodomains

(26).

[Table 4]

Summary and conclusion

It is increasingly common that polyphosphoric acid (PPA) is used to modify the

rheological characteristics of bitumen. However, it is difficult to identify bitumens that

react with PPA and establish the level of PPA required for a given application. This is in

great part because the mechanism of PPA action on bitumen is unknown. To better

understand their reaction, or lack of, the characteristics of PPA and bitumen were briefly

reviewed. PPA has a high dielectric constant whereas that of bitumen is low, which

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 9

renders the dissociation of PPA into its acidic and basic moieties ineffective. PPA is thus

a very weak acid in bitumen. It can thus be postulated that PPA can only dissociate and

react with bitumen in enclaves of high dielectric constants formed from the aggregation

of amphoteric heteroatomic groups into nanodomains.

Acknowledgements

JFM thanks Dr Michael Falkiewicz for comments on the manuscript, and ICL

Performance Products LP and Paragon Technical Services, inc. for financial support.

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Captions

Table 1. Typical composition of SARAs fractions*

Table 2. Composition of some bitumens with an identical grade*

Table 3. Grades and designations of phosphoric acids (PA)

Table 4. Dielectric constants of some compounds (47)

Figure 1. Typical organic functions in bitumen. Dotted bonds indicate possible

extensions.

Figure 2. Production and reaction of phosphorus pentoxide.

Figure 3. Production of PPA from the dehydration (a) and dispersion (b) methods. n is
an integer.

Figure 4. Distribution of chain lengths in three PPA grades.

Figure 5. Selected examples of synthetic applications of the effect of PPA on a starting

material.

Figure 6. Dissociation of orthophosphoric acid and its constants. pK values are from
(30).

Figure 7. Stabilization of double charges by tautomerization (left) and delocalisation in

pyrophosphoric acid. Not all possible structures are shown.

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Table 1. Typical composition of SARAs fractions*

Fraction Composition
Saturates n- and iso-alkanes
Aromatics Alkylated cyclopentanes and cyclohexanes
Resins Alkylated and cycloalkylated aromatic rings
Asphaltenes Alkylated condensed aromatic rings
* From reference 14.

Table 2. Composition of some bitumens with an identical grade*

Bitumen AAA-1 AAK-2 AAS-2

Source Lloydminster Boscan Arab Heavy
Saturates 11 8 6
Naphtene Aromatics 32 31 46
Polar Aromatics 37 39 30
Asphaltenes (n-heptane) 16 19 17
* From (29).

Table 3. Grades and designations of phosphoric acids (PA)

PA Formula 1 Formula 2 Formula 3 Designation P2O5% PA% P2O5/H2O*

Ortho H3PO4 P2O5 3H2O HO(HPO3)H Solid anhydrous 72.4 100 0.33
P2O5 2.35H2O Super-PA 75.9 105 0.40
Pyro H4P2O7 P2O5 2H2O HO(HPO3)2H 79.8 110 0.50
Tri H5P3O10 3P2O5 5H2O HO(HPO3)3H 82.6 114 0.60
Meta H2P2O6 P2O5 H2O (HPO3)n Meta-PA 88.8 123 1.00
* molar ratio

Table 4. Dielectric constants of some compounds (47)

Name Structure
Water HOH 79
Phosphoric acids HOP(O)(OH)OH 61*
Ethanol HOCH2CH3 24
Ethyl ether CH3CH2OCH3CH2 4
Bitumen Hydrocarbon mixture 3
Benzene C6H6 2
Hexane C6H8 2
* From (48)

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 14

N O O
R O
H3C R
Ketones
S R
R Alkanes R Pyridines R R
Esters
Aromatic sulfides H OH R
N O
Alkyl- H3C S R
aromatics
R Sulfides R
Indoles R
S Phenols
O Ethers
R
R R
R
N O
Thiophenes H
Benzofurans
Quinolones

Figure 1. Typical organic functions in bitumen. Dotted bonds indicate possible

extensions.

O
P
P4 + 5 O2 2 P2O5 (i.e., P4O10) O O
O O
O P P O
P
2 P2O5 + 6 H2O 4 H3PO4 (or 2 P2O5 3H2O) O O
O P4O 10

Figure 2. Production and reaction of phosphorus pentoxide.

(a) O O
- (n - 1) H2O
n H3PO4 HO P O P O H
+ (n - 1) H2O OH OH n

(b) O

n P 2O 5
+ n H3PO4 HO P O H
3n
OH
Figure 3. Production of PPA from the dehydration (a) and dispersion (b) methods. n is
an integer.

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60.00

50.00 105%
Percent composition
110%
40.00 114%

30.00

20.00

10.00

0.00
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15
Number of repeat units in PPA chain

Figure 4. Distribution of chain lengths in three PPA grades.

OH OPPA Ph Ph

N O N O
H H
O
OEt O
O OEt
O O

N N O
OH H
Figure 5. Selected examples of synthetic applications of the effect of PPA on a starting
material.

pK1 = 2.1 pK2 = 7.2 pK3 = 12.7

+ 3- +
H3PO4 H2PO4 - + H HPO4 2- + H
+
PO4 + H

Figure 6. Dissociation of orthophosphoric acid and its constants. pK values are from
(30).
- -
O O O O O O
H+
- -
HO P O P O HO P O P O HO P O P O
- + -
OH O H O OH O OH

Figure 7. Stabilization of double charges by tautomerization (left) and delocalisation in

pyrophosphoric acid. Not all possible structures are shown.

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